Welcome to Adam Kraus's random mixing of essays, commentary, and humor, all presented in a blog format. Hopefully you will find it interesting.

5.24.2004

Get Out the Duct tape and Plastic Sheeting!

I don't have anything great to say. But that's what I like about blogs. Blogging seems to me to reward productivity much more than deliberative quality; I can make a bad post today and tomorrow it will be totally forgotten if I have a decent post up.

These people think America is currently in the process of rotting from within. According to their historical / futurological analysis, large-scale social life goes through repeating cycles of 4 roughly generation-long phases. What we're headed for next, of course, is a giant catastrophe.

First came the postwar High, then the Awakening of the '60s and '70s, and now the Unraveling. This audacious and provocative book tells us what to expect just beyond the start of the next century. Are you ready for the Fourth Turning?

While the thesis is interesting and merits further attention, I have to wonder, haven't there been people in every generation who have predicted an impending catastrophe for that generation? Someone should do a generational study of catastrophic generational studies to find out if there's any kind of regularity there. That would be a generational study worth reading.